Recommends

Here’s a few other things I recommend using in your pursuit of online excellence. Wherever possible I’m making use of affiliate links so that you can support me and this blog if you decide to use any of these services.

Basic Website Hosting

Dreamhost has been my hosting platform of choice for years now and aside from a few minor hiccups here and there I’ve had nary an issue with any of the sites I’ve hosted with them. One click installs for software like WordPress, IMAP email support, and a great control panel all make for a great host for most small to medium websites. Plus they’ve got this great referral program that will make you and I rich beyond our wildest dreams!

Specialized WordPress Hosting

WP Engine is a web host dedicated to hosting specifically WordPress sites. It’s all they do and they do it very well.

With plans starting at $29/month it’s not for everyone – Dreamhost should certainly suffice for most personal/small business websites – but if you don’t want to take care of WordPress upgrades, data backups, malware scanning and great WordPress knowledgable support, then be sure to check out WP Engine.

Squarespace Hosted Website

Squarespace is a powerful website building tool where your website is hosted and managed by them, but you have complete control over the layout, structure, design and content of your website without ever having to step foot into CSS or HTML code.

But if you do want to wade into the nerd waters a bit, you can have complete control over your Squarespace site, starting from one of their gorgeous templates and doing all sorts of CSS inserts, layout changes and many other things that are otherwise unheard of from a website building tool like this.

If WordPress isn’t careful, Squarespace could certainly eat their lunch as more and more people are less worried about plugins and messing with code and more concerned with the content of their site.

Microblogging

Tumblr is great for quick and easy posting of stuff you find around the internet. Their own why Tumblr site does a great job of explaining why, but my reason is because the “u” in their logo is actually an upside down “n” – clever!

Photos

Videos

Depending on what the purpose is, I use a combination of YouTube for personal/misc. videos and Vimeo for videos I’ve spent a bit more time on. The main reason being that Vimeo doesn’t plaster the site full of ads and chrome.